Onwards and upwards.

[Barry]

Ok, so for those that haven't seen this. I've copied it over from my old thread.
Mozza is right, I shouldn't have hidden it away.

Hello everyone, I have something to say, something I've not told the forum before. It's important but please don't judge me for it, it was a very long time ago. It had a big impact on me, my W and my M for a long time. As I reflect on how I find myself here, this is something that's had a profound effect on me all my life.

I cheated on my W when we'd been married for about a year.

This would be 20 years ago now. I don't even know why I did it. I prided myself on being someone who would never do that and I was very much in love with my W. I was such an a***hole.
I broke it off with OW. I was very attracted to her but I couldn't do it to my W any more. OW told me in the same phone call that she was pregnant.
She had a termination and I never saw her again.

About 6 months later, OW called my workplace one night (I worked shifts back then) to tell me she was going to tell my W as she felt I'd left her in the lurch and had got away with it (she was right, I had).

She'd found out where I lived and had been spying on the house. I told her there and then that I would tell my W rather than her hear it from an OW and she said she was going to tell her the next day.
I left work, went home and woke my wife at about 1:00am and told her everything. She was devastated and something died in her and in our M that day.

I left the house and slept in my car for a couple of days. I was so ashamed of myself. I had been for a long time, and I was almost glad I'd told her.
I called W a few days later and she said to come home.
We talked about it, and I answered every question she asked truthfully. We both cried, but she was so hurt by it. Anyway, she said she wanted me to stay and for us to work things out. She hadn't told anyone about it and she wanted it to stay that way. Our families still didn't know up to BD, although hers probably do now. Mine still don't.

I've never wanted to jeopardise my life that that again. I'm not a serial cheater and I've never even considered being intimate with anyone else in 20 years. I mean that.

It took a long time to gain her trust back but we were both determined to make it work. After a year and a half or so, she told me that she'd forgiven me but she'd never forget it. It affected me for years though, too many years. I let my W dominate me in a lot of ways because I walked on eggshells for most of our early marriage. I'd hurt the one I loved in the worst way possible and I was always trying to make amends even after she said she forgave me.

This went on in my head for so many years that it became engrained into my very being. It wasn't in the forefront of my mind all the time obviously but it became the norm that I'd always be the one to back down on everything. My W never apologised for anything in our M.

We went to Greece for a week on our 15th wedding anniversary and whilst we were there, something bought the topic up. I told my W that I still felt sorry for what I did back then, but that it had made me love her more when I realised what I was could have lost. She told me to let it go, that she never thought about it and only ever thought of me as a faithful husband. We ML that night and it was the best of our lives. In fact, those were the best years around that time.

I've never been able to forgive myself completely for it though. I always only ever wanted to please my wife and to make her happy. Over the years, I suffocated my W with love into becoming a WAW. It was her decision to go but I paved the way.

So here I am, about to be a divorced all because I couldn't forget the past.
As the saying goes, we reap what we sow.